05Mar

Kid’s Gluten-free Birthday Cake plus Natural Red Food Coloring

Last weekend we had a belated second birthday party for Elijah and his friends at the downtown Fire Station in Frederick.  His birthday lands three days before Christmas so we decided to wait to have the “kid” party when people weren’t so busy.

It was great!  The firemen and women showed us around the station, we got to sit in the fire engine (best part), see a fire man get dressed in all of his gear and see inside an ambulance. We also got to witness a 911 call and an ambulance driving out of the station.

The cake:

My mom found a fire truck cake mold at a local craft store so I made the cake in the shape of a fire truck.  One of Elijah’s favorite cakes that I made over the holidays for the Just Desserts for Limited Diets e-book was the Carrot Cake with Vanilla Icing.  So I used that recipe but ended up doubling it because the pan was pretty big and said it fit a two layer cake mix.

When we took it out of the mold, it ended up looking like a rectangle with a point at one end because the fire truck imprint didn’t show up on the cake.  I realized that I was going to have to decorate it so that people could see what it was!  I guess I just hadn’t thought about this before I made the cake.

Natural Red Food Coloring:

I had already planned on using the Vanilla Frosting recipe from GNOWFGLINS.com.  I then decided to make the wheels and ladder out of raisins (since the cake has raisins in it, I thought this was a good choice).  Then, I was trying to figure out how to make red frosting without red food coloring to outline the shape of the truck.

I decided beet juice was the was to go so I sent Dave to the store.  We have a juicer so we juiced the beets to make the juice.  It didn’t take very much to turn the icing bright red-fuchsia.  My mom had a cake decorating kit that I used to outline the truck in red icing and it turned out adorable.

Here are the recipes:

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25Feb

What kind of weekly menu planner are you looking for?

veggiesweb

First off, I apologize again for my absence on my blog.  We now have a contract on a house and are in the midst of all the details before we close.

Also, on a personal note, I am finding that winter time has been urging me towards resting more and being more internal.  I mentioned in one of my New Year’s posts that I am not suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) this season like I have in the past.  What I feel is happening instead is that I am actually enjoying the “yin” energy of the winter.  This is mostly showing up as working less, relaxing more, taking more baths, and not going out as much.  It seems like it started shortly before the massive winter wonderland we received a few weeks ago. To me, this is a real sign that my being is balancing out and becoming more in tune with nature, the way we are supposed to be.

New Changes to my Menu Planners and Website:

At the same time, I am very excited about some upcoming changes to my website.  I am not ready to go into all the details of what is going to change but I feel I want to start talking about them at some level.

These changes are in response to the needs people with multiple food allergies have.  When I started my menu planners, I didn’t really know what I was getting into.  But I did realize that making menu planners for people with food allergies posed some real problems to solve.  The main one being – everyone is allergic to something different.  There are common food allergens, but from there, there are so many other foods that people can be allergic to.  Beyond that, people, especially children, have many preferences of what they like to eat and what they don’t like.

I have been solving this problem by creating menu planners for specific diets.  The response to this has been great and so far I have the following menu planners.  Most of them are for four weeks of menu plans:

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